Planning Bill

I have two amendments in this group, but it might be easier if I consider the amendments in numerical order. I have a few comments to make on the amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith. Amendment No. 27 is good and I have a lot of sympathy with it. Many Members of the Committee have spoken about the importance of national policy statements, which are fundamental to achieving a policy framework within which different types of projects can be delivered and, we hope, passed by the new system. On Amendment No. 29, I cannot understand whether the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, wants to confine the policy statements to energy, transport, water, waste water and waste. It seems to me that policy statements are required for everything. Under Clause 14, if I have counted correctly, there are 16. Perhaps I misunderstood the noble Lord, but we should need a policy statement for nuclear power stations just as much as for waste or something like that. I probably have misinterpreted what he said, but perhaps he could clarify that. On Amendment No. 32, in my name, I am concerned that the five transport-related infrastructure projects under Clause 14(1)(g), (h), (i), (j) and (k) could end up with different national policy statements that possibly do not bear as much relation to each other as they might. For example, we still have our airport policy, which could convert into a national policy statement requiring a third runway to be built at Heathrow. But I suspect that quite soon Ministers may decide they have to catch up with the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats and propose a high-speed line, which would go through Heathrow to Scotland and London. Whether both are needed is a debate that should be had, but it is no good having one policy statement for air, another for rail and another for road. I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group. I am very pleased that rail freight interchanges are included in the Bill. Rail freight interchanges could happen at airports as well. Air freight could easily be transferred from air to rail, which could save a lot of the traffic around airports that causes the traffic jams we see today. There is an enormous benefit in the Government agreeing that the five transport-related infrastructure projects should come under one policy statement. I shall be interested to hear what my noble friend has to say about that. On Amendment No. 43, there is an inconsistency in whether national policy statements, under Clause 5, will be site specific. In the past, I have discussed that with my noble friend and officials, but I do not have a logical answer. To be site specific, you presumably would produce a national policy statement on nuclear power stations; for example, one will be next to Sizewell, one will be at Dungeness, whether or not there are floods, and another one will be somewhere else. We could debate the point of producing a national policy statement which specifies the exact site. On the other hand, if that is done for ports, Ministers will find that port owners and operators will get extremely angry. They see the importance of the private sector being able to compete on equal terms between, say, Southampton ABP, Felixstowe and anywhere else. With some justification they would complain bitterly if the Government were to say, ““We’ll have a port at Felixstowe and we won’t have one at Southampton, but we might have one in Romney Marsh””. I urge my noble friend to look at subsection (5) and indicate in her response how site-specific these policy statements are going to be. They may be route-specific or site-specific, or they may not be specific at all. There is a serious inconsistency here, and I think it would be better to change the reference in paragraph (a) from ““specified area”” to ““a region””. If this is a series of national policy statements, a region is probably a better area to look at than, say, an area down the field and turning left at the signpost.